A marketing campaign will begin next week to attract corporate dollars and convince people that the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center will in fact happen in downtown Cincinnati in 2004.

        The image campaign comes at a time when museum leaders are on the defensive over criticism about the Freedom Center's location in Cincinnati, which is in the spotlight as it deals with race-related conflict.

A computer image shows the south side of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. (National Underground Railroad Freedom Center) | ZOOM |

        The first of the campaign's three phases will kick off with three ads in local newspapers, featuring heroes such as Harriet Tubman and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and urging donors to step forward to be today's heroes. The ads were produced free by the Leo Burnett agency in Chicago, which also handles accounts for Coca-Cola and Walt Disney.

        Ed Rigaud, president and chief executive officer of the Freedom Center, said the public fund-raising campaign will take the project from the abstract to reality. He said Freedom Center officials, who have raised $65 million of the $110 million needed, expect to raise the entire amount by late 2002.

        The campaign is “letting everybody know how they can participate and have some ownership,” Mr. Rigaud said. “It's for real.”

        A more aggressive fund-raising effort will begin this fall, featuring more ads in local print, television and radio. The final phase of the campaign, a national image campaign, will follow, he said.

ABOUT THE MUSEUM

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center will celebrate the Underground Railroad, a secret network of African-Americans, white abolitionists and their allies who helped slaves escape from the South to freedom in the North.    • When: Scheduled to open spring 2004.    • Where: On the riverfront, between Paul Brown Stadium and Great American Ball Park.    • How can I get involved? Call (877) 648-4838 or visit www.undergroundrailroad.org.

        The marketing effort comes as Cincinnati tries to repair its image after the April riots sparked by the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man. The riots caused more than $1 million in damage and deepened the racial divide in Cincinnati — the eighth-most racially segregated metropolitan region in the nation, according to census figures.

        Critics say the city's history of racial problems is reason enough for a national museum against racism to be built elsewhere.

        “You're still going to have racism in Cincinnati. Is this going to solve it?” said Charles Blockson, a historian who specializes in the Underground Railroad at Temple University in Philadelphia.

        He said there are buildings nationwide that were actually integral to the historic Underground Railroad — the secret passage Southern slaves took north to be free — that are in need of those funds going to Cincinnati's museum.

        “You're going to have this big museum out there, and you're going to talk about the Underground Railroad, and at the same time you have racism around you, and you have buildings in other states that need to be repaired that were involved in the Underground Railroad,” he said.

        Closer to home, Connie Quarles, a volunteer with the Friends of Freedom Society-Ohio Underground Railroad Association, said she is upset that the Freedom Center is receiving $16 million in federal funds over four years, money that should be used to preserve Underground Railroad sites.

        “There are sites being lost each day that could have used a portion of that money to be restored,” said Ms. Quarles, of Zanesville, Ohio. “At this present time, I don't see myself visiting the Freedom Center nor supporting it. It's nothing against the people there; it's just the principle.”

        Freedom Center co-chairman Judge Nathaniel Jones said that criticism is misguided.

        “I haven't discerned any negative effect on the Freedom Center,” said Judge Jones, of the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.

        “My view is, if you're going to use the existence of racism as a basis for determining where something is going to be located, I think you might as well put it on the moon, because racism has blanketed this country like the morning dew. That can't be the test.”

        Judge Jones also said the Freedom Center will enhance the efforts to preserve Underground Railroad sites across the country because the museum will be part of a computer network connecting those sites.

        “It will make their significance even more meaningful,” Judge Jones said.
       
       
       

Riots on people's minds
Police welcome Ujima visitors
New help promised for area
Communities still counting cost of floods
Floods serve as insurance reminder
Harsh reality sinks in along creek
Freedom Center looks to build identity
Boy, 2, shot twice on Vine St.
Businesses take interest in task force
Hospital diversions increase
Lawsuit accuses police of taking drug suspects' cash
Olympics here? 'Get real'
Smog alert issued for weekend
Tristate A.M. Report
Woodward wheels in motion
Ex-worker charged in robbery at pizza place
Kings considers incremental levy
Plan's goal: Good health
Armstrong presents award
Attorney general says Ohioans wise to telemarketers
State park planned for Middle Bass
$50,000 in stolen clothes seized
Company files request to get area rezoned
Jail workers owed for time
Kentucky News Briefs
Licenses getting new look
Man bares his plan for Ky. nudist camp
One among 10 in crash dies
Ventriloquists throw voices to new stages